Raccoon track

It is early morning, on a trail not far from the city. This day the air is fresh, crisp, and washed clean like laundry on a line. I am the first out, it seems, although other mammals have been busy in the night. I notice tracks near a narrow spur of the trail, feathers scattered helter-skelter, vestige of a massacre that will go unrecorded in history books. From the looks of it, a predator crept silently toward its avian prey, waiting, watching, concentrating, careful not to reveal itself. But it has revealed itself—to me. Its paw print shows four toes and a slight cleft in the pad, which identifies the animal as a bobcat.

What I was doing on this walk is something humans have been doing for thousands of years. I was tracking—not to survive as was once the case—but to enhance my connection with, and appreciation of, nature. All that's needed is to notice and deduce. And in an instant, you can join great trackers like Sherlock Holmes, Henry Thoreau, Miss Jane Marple, and Lieutenant Columbo. You begin to think about what you see on your walk and ask, as Olaus Murie suggested in his definitive A Field Guide to Animal Tracks, "What happened here?"

And this does not only apply to animal tracks and signs. Northern California naturalist and tracker Michael Ellis takes a wider view of tracking—a view that covers the urban scene as well—asking such questions as how did those tire tracks get where they are, or what does a wind from the northwest mean for future weather, or where do those power lines lead to, or what happened in this parking lot to cause broken glass on the pavement (a good tracker would either park somewhere else or make sure her insurance was all paid up)? Ellis even sees attempts to discover the origins of the universe as a form of tracking.

As we walked and talked near his home in Point Reyes Station, California, he gave me a tracking quiz, asking if I knew what blue reflectors, imbedded in the middle of many California streets (and an increasing number of other roads across the country), indicated. "No," I replied. (Do you know? Read on for the answer.)

The universe and blue reflectors notwithstanding, the question of "What happened here?" can enrich any walk. "Unlike a bird walk, you might see only two mammals on a mammal walk, if you're lucky," Ellis said. "But you can see their echoes. For me, it's addictive. I want to know what everything is."

Move on to Tracking 101

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